


If I Stay, If I Go

by mousemind



Series: Happy/Alone [2]
Category: Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: Alternate Realities, Gen, M/M, Nonexplicit Sexual Content, Post-Season/Series 02, Richard's family, happy ending vs sad ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-08
Updated: 2015-10-13
Packaged: 2018-04-25 12:10:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4960099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mousemind/pseuds/mousemind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Richard leaves for home without a word, one reality where Jared waits for him to return, and another where he follows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. To Stay

**Author's Note:**

> This is meant as a continuation of [Happy, Alone](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4754615) but can absolutely be read without it! In short: Richard leaves for Tulsa without warning. A (very nice) comment from [blipblopblork](http://archiveofourown.org/users/blipblopblork/pseuds/blipblopblork) encouraged a follow up where we all get what we want... to wallow in sadness, AND to get that Big Happy Ending we all so deserve.

A lot of people have left Jared in his life, but none of them have ever come back.

The leaving he is accustomed to. The return is so much harder.

This, at least, is what he discovers when he opens the door to his bedroom - once Richard's, but for the last four months his own - and discovers Richard standing at his bookcase, peering contemplatively at something on the second shelf.

It's like seeing a ghost. Jared goes numb, is overwhelmed as conflicting waves of elation and dread wash over him. Richard is back. Richard who left without a word. Richard who is still skittish and misplaced looking in what was once his own room, but infuriatingly lovely, his strong profile silhouetted by the window behind him.

"Richard," he squeaks, his bag slipping off his shoulder and thudding to the ground.

Richard jumps, stumbles backwards until he slams his hip into the corner of his desk. He winces and, almost reflexively, yelps out,

"Sorry!" 

This was not quite the "sorry" Jared had envisioned alone at night these last four months, picturing Richard full of embarrassed contrition and a desire to make things right again. 

"You're back," Jared says, sounding distant even in his own ears. 

"I'm back," Richard parrots, equally as hollow. Richard notes that Jared looks almost frightened. Jared clocks the same, written all over Richard's face and tense shoulders.

"Erlich let me stay while here you were away," Jared explains, not meaning to sound as defensive as he does, "I hope you aren't upset."

"I'm not," Richard says quickly, trying to interrupt.

"It's easy for me to leave. It won't take long," Jared persists, already moving to the closet and kneeling down to extract an old duffle bag from behind his hanging clothes. 

"No, no, I know Jared, I know," Richard stutters ineffectually behind him. "You don't have to - "

"Does anyone else know you're here?" Jared asks, shifting right back to business. Back to where he feels comfortable, where this isn't the lousy ending to some extended romantic fantasy he'd been foolish enough to entertain. Jared doesn't mind tamping down his feelings; he's become exceedingly good at it 

"No," Richard swallows, looking a bit chastised. 

"Well, I don't think anyone is home yet, but I trust you'll fill them in."

Richard offers Jared a hand to help him stand. Jared rises to his feet unassisted.

"I missed you," Richard says in a small voice. 

Again, Jared would be loath to admit how many times he had allowed himself to imagine Richard saying those exact words. Pressed up against Jared's chest, shouted tearfully from the doorway, whispered huskily into his ear from behind as they...

Jared only nods. 

"We were worried about you. You didn't return any of our calls."

Richard nervously cracks his own knuckles in the silence that follows, before summoning up the courage to stammer, "I - I wasn't ready." 

It's not the answer either of them wants, but they both know that, at least, it's the truth. 

So Jared manages a smile - he's good at this, very good, exceptionally practiced and oh, so good - and says, 

"Welcome home." 

Jared retrieves a jacket from the closet and begins to leave. 

"This picture," Richard says quietly, and when Jared looks back he's gesturing weakly towards what he was looking at earlier on the bookshelf. "All of us onstage at TechCrunch... I've never seen this picture before." 

Jared feels his face grow hot as he looks deliberately away. For the first time in this whole conversation, the threat of bursting into tears seems dangerously imminent.

"I found it online," Jared answers, voice quaking over a knot in his throat.

"It's nice," Richard says. It is. All of them embracing, Erlich with both arms lifted triumphantly over his head, Dinesh jammed between Erlich and Gilfoyle who is uncharacteristically beaming, and Jared, tucked so closely to Richard's side that his face is completely obscured. The light hits Richard strongest, almost glowingly; there on the end, for once looking happy and carefree and unfettered. Jared likes how happy Richard looks -- how happy Richard  _is_  -- there with Jared's arms wrapped tightly around his torso, standing victorious, deserving.

"If you could send me a copy..." Richard continues, voice reedy and thin.  

"You can keep that one," Jared offers. "It's your room."

He leaves quickly, gets in his car, and drives nowhere in particular until he's so tired he can't see straight anymore. He supposes there is some beauty in a swift exit.

Over the past few months, Richard was surprised to realize he thought of Jared surprisingly often. More than he could have ever anticipated, he found things that he thought would make Jared laugh, or encountered songs he remembered Jared listening to in his car. On the days when getting out of bed seemed impossible and Richard took an ugly sort of enjoyment in running over the list of what he'd done wrong, it was the thought of Jared that twisted the knife most violently in his gut.

What Richard learned about himself while he was in Tulsa was that he might be in love. 

What Jared learned about himself while Richard was in Tulsa was that he might not.


	2. To Go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ...And a reality where Jared summons up some courage and flies out to Tulsa for Richard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU for the overwhelming and kind response to chapter one... I didn't think it'd break so many hearts! Consider this chapter my apology: it is significantly happier, a lot longer, and more than a little sappy. Also, thanks in advance for indulging me as I create an entire fictional midwestern family for Richard!

When it comes down to it, Jared isn't accustomed to getting what he wants. Loss, disappointment, the slow but inevitable slog of moving on - these were touchstones in Jared's life. 

Jared resolves to forget Richard. To seal up his feelings, tidy and airtight. He thinks of Richard like an old photograph, slipped into protective plastic in an album. One photo of many. A souvenir of a lovely time Jared almost didn't deserve. Jared wonders if Richard ever could have loved him, but figures it's safer to never find out.

It would be easy.

It  _would've_  been easy.

If not for Erlich.

"You're being an idiot. You both are." 

It's an incessant mantra.

"Fuck Richard if he doesn't want to see you. Do you want to see  _him?_ "

Erlich makes it impossible to ignore. His feelings for Richard stay sharp as a tack, pricking into him at all hours of the day, a constant reminder that can't be packed away so easily like throwing a few sweaters into an old bag and shuffling off to a new foster home.

Erlich is there to nonchalantly offer up Richard's home address. ("Don't blame me for hacking into Richard's email - blame Richard for having the same dumb password for literally everything!") When Jared purchases the plane ticket, Erlich immediately shoves a cold beer into Jared's hand. 

"Hey," he says with a warm smile, and Jared wonders if Erlich is about to say something profound and inspiring.

"Don't come back unless you've got Richie. You understand me? I don't house failures."

It might have been the most inspiring bit of advice, after all.

\----

Jared lands in Tulsa in the beginnings of a snowstorm. It's just a light dusting now, one of the airline attendants says, but you'll see, we saw on the weather radar what's coming, and we won't be flying for a while. 

It feels almost appropriately dramatic or apocalyptic, given how foolish and nervous Jared feels. He'd left Palo Alto in the heaviest coat he owned - a thick canvas jacket with fleece lining. As Jared shuffles to the rental car unit outside the airport, he finds the jacket useless and soaked through in a matter of minutes.

Jared makes arrangements at a cheap motel in downtown Tulsa. Everyone is friendly and kindly try to avoid staring at Jared's flimsy, soggy coat in the middle of January.

He resolves not to see Richard tonight.

He hangs his wet clothes in the tiny shower, and sits on the edge of his hotel bed in his boxers. The hotel TV flashes a cheap-looking slideshow that proclaims, "Tulsa: Reconnect with Loved Ones."

He turns off the TV and unfolds a new, dry shirt. 

He still feels a bit guilty about Erlich having access to Richard's private emails, but can't complain when he unfolds the printout Erlich had presented Jared with, Richard's address printed clearly at the top.

It's a fifteen minute drive, at best. 

Twenty-two traffic signs. 

Three empty parking spaces along the curb.

Thirty seconds to walk to the door.

Jared hears a lock shift and then the front door swings open, revealing a short blonde woman in a quilted purple bathrobe, peering warily into the dimming twilight. 

"Can I help you," she asks, clearly trying to maintain politeness. 

"I'm looking for Richard," Jared says, manufacturing a smile that he hopes belies his sudden, crippling doubt.

The expression on the woman changes entirely -- Jared watches her shift from suspicion to surprise to confusion. 

"I'm so sorry," she says, wrinkling up her nose the way that Richard always does, and it makes Jared's heart dive, fast, into the pit of his stomach. "But have we met?" 

Jared shakes his head, tries to pretend that the idea of meeting Richard's mother isn't somehow both terrifying and a fantastic delight. 

"We haven't. My name is Jared. I'm a friend."

She shows him inside, hangs up his jacket, and offers him anything in the kitchen. 

"Oh, stupid me," she mumbles, before extending her hand. She chuckles a little as she introduces herself. "Nancy. Richard's mother." 

"It's lovely to meet you," Jared replies, and it's not just a nicety. Her face is the most he's seen of Richard in nearly four months.

"I recognize you now," Mrs. Hendriks says with a smile, wagging a finger in the direction of a small coffee table. "I hope this doesn't embarrass you."

She retrieves a framed photo from the tabletop and hands it gingerly to Jared. 

"In my defense," Mrs. Hendriks continues amicably, "you can't see much of your face."

It's a photo Jared vaguely recognizes from TechCrunch, just moments after they'd been declared winners.

"Richie," he distantly hears Mrs. Hendriks shouts up the stairwell, "you have a visitor."

But Jared is transfixed by this photo, which feels like it was taken in a different lifetime. A life, maybe, where Richard had no problems to run from, where Jared could regularly throw his arms around him and express his gratitude, or excitement, or adoration. 

He doesn't hear Richard padding slowly down the carpeted stairs. But he does hear Richard make a short, strangled sound. 

"Richard," Jared intones weakly, awash in conflicted emotions. Richard is more handsome than he'd ever remembered. Richard looks terrible, thin and unkempt. Richard needs to be cared for. Richard needs to be reprimanded.

Jared remembers the photo in his hands and burns with embarrassment. 

But before he can say anything, Richard is upstairs in a flash, locked behind a bathroom door.

\----

"I'll go check on him," Mrs. Hendriks says for maybe the sixth time, but Jared once again asks her not to get off the couch.

It was nice of her to sit with him instead of kicking him out, Jared considers. And the tea was a lovely gesture. She looks vaguely guilty, which breaks Jared's heart.

"It's good to know he was still talking to some friends. I never heard him on the phone or anything like that, so I guessed -- "

Jared shakes his head and busies himself with a loose thread dangling over his wrist. 

"He hasn't. We haven't spoken in months."

There is a long silence that even Mrs. Hendriks doesn't fill with her usual flustered chattering.

"Why did you come," she finally asks in a small, quiet voice. 

"Mrs. Hendriks," Jared says, summoning all of his good manners and even-keeled acuity (he couldn't bear to call her Nancy, not in a hundred years). "I hope to take Richard home with me." 

She nearly gapes back at him, before nodding once, twice, and humming a tiny sound of assent. 

"Okay," is all she manages to say. "Yes. That's... good."

"Thank you," Jared responds soberly. "I was hoping you wouldn't be upset."

"Not at all," Mrs. Hendriks says, a foreign sort of solemness knitting her eyebrows together. She takes a moment to consider, looks maybe like she's building the courage to say something, and continues, "Richard isn't well."

"How so?" Jared persists, but she just bites her bottom lip the way Richard often does when he doesn't know what words to choose, and shakes her head.

"I don't know," she says distantly.

"Jared," comes Richard's voice from the top of the stairs. Jared can't see him in the low light, can't discern from the tone of his voice the emotional state he's in.

"Do you want to come up here and talk?" 

"I do," Jared says as evenly as possible.

So Jared climbs the stairs and follows Richard down the hallway and into his room.

What Jared wants to say is,  _Richard, I have thought about you every day. Have you thought about me?_  

Or,  _Richard, I'm sorry to have followed you out here, but I can't leave until you follow me back._

Or,  _oh, Richard, your room, it smells like you, and I'd almost forgotten what that meant._

But he's wise and says nothing, and waits for Richard instead. Richard faces away from him, drumming his fingers nervously on the corner of his small desk. 

"What do you want from me," Richard asserts in a flat, quiet voice. 

"Nothing," Jared answers, even if that's a little untrue. Then, truthfully: "I'm happy to see you, Richard." 

Richard spins on him, red-faced, eyes prickling with angry tears.

"You really shouldn't have come here," Richard says warningly, voice ragged over a knot in his throat.

Jared feels his fingers go numb but expected this, in some way. 

"Okay," Jared says. 

"When do you leave?" 

"I have a ticket home in four days."

"You should go sooner."

"Okay, I will."

"Goodbye," Richard snaps, gesturing to the closed door. Jared steels himself, manages a polite smile for Richard, and turns to leave. As Jared places his hand on the doorknob, he hears Richard bark out an angry, ugly laugh. 

"Jesus, Jared, you're not even going to fight me?"

Jared turns back to him, feeling leaden with shame and disappointment. Leaving is easy. Fighting is not. 

"Why would I fight you? I didn't come to upset you."

"So why did you come? Who sent you? Erlich? Laurie? Are there some papers I forgot to sign legally allowing Raviga to keep fucking my corpse after death?"

"No," Jared says, and the anger already is so exhausting, so unpleasant, so uncomfortably reminiscent of being berated and mistreated in home after home after home -

Richard slams his open palm down on his desk and shouts wordlessly, his eyes screwed shut and face and neck flushed bright red. 

"It's over, okay?" he snaps. "Pied Piper is over. I am over. And, Jared, for you to come here to try and rope me into - "

"I didn't come here for Pied Piper," Jared interrupts bravely. "I came here for you."

The silence that stretches between them is razor sharp and tightrope-thin. Jared sucks in a short breath and professes, 

"I'm sorry if it embarrasses you for me to say this Richard, but working alongside you -  _being_  with you - it meant the world to me. It's not the business I can't let go of. It's you." 

Richard tilts his head back and exhales a shaky, unstable breath. He doesn't look as anxious as Jared would have expected. Instead, he's gone still and distant, focused almost intently on where the lamplight splashes against the ceiling.

"If you never want to see me again, that's fine, I can put this aside" Jared concludes, "Otherwise... I would love to see you tomorrow."

Richard doesn't say a word, still transfixed on the ceiling. Jared figures it's as good an answer as any.

Jared opens the bedroom door and closes it with preternatural care behind him, Richard still absolutely frozen in the middle of the room. He tiptoes quietly back downstairs, where Mrs. Hendriks is reading a book in the kitchen. She leaps to her feet expectantly upon hearing Jared's return -- he had rudely hoped he could escape unseen, her hopeful expression almost too much to bear.

"It was a pleasure to meet you," Jared says politely, saving his tears for the privacy of his rental car.

The snow has worsened exponentially in the last hour or so, and Jared winces as he puts on his still-wet jacket to head out into the cold.

Mrs. Hendriks makes a surprised clucking sound and tears through the house like a windstorm, throwing open closets and muttering under her breath. She circles back with a wool, forest green jacket thrown over her arm.

"Here," she insists, shoving it into Jared's chest. "You can't go back outside without it. You'll catch your death of cold."

Jared looks at her helplessly, wanting to resist such kindness, knowing it only makes the departure that much more painful. 

"It's such an old thing, Gary won't even notice it's on loan. You can't say no. I won't let you."

Jared shrugs off his soaked canvas jacket and dons the giant old overcoat gratefully. He thanks her in a thin, embarrassed voice.

"I'll see you around," Mrs. Hendriks says with an admirable sincerity. Jared only has the heart to nod at her before heading down the front stairs and into the driveway.

"Hey. What are you doing tomorrow?"

Jared swings back around towards that voice with an almost comical speed. Richard stands in the open doorway, arms tucked around his chest to protect himself from the chill. He isn't smiling, but something about him looks more like the Richard he remembers and adores, the Richard who accepted a challenge and prevailed.

"Nothing," Jared answers truthfully.

"Come by around noon."

Jared still cries on his car ride back to the hotel, but for a very different reason. 

\----

Jared is there at noon on the dot, but sits in his car for five minutes so as not to seem desperate. 

He rings the doorbell and Richard pulls the door open in an instant, like he'd been waiting there all along. 

It occurs to Jared that maybe Richard, too, isn't playing it as cool as he would have hoped. Anxious, delighted butterflies arise in Jared's stomach, which he fights to abate.

Jared struggles to think of a casual way to greet Richard, but doesn't have to once Richard begins chuckling,

"Is that my dad's coat?"

"Oh," Jared says, overcome with embarrassment, "Your mother insisted. I didn't - "

"You flew to Tulsa in January without a winter coat."

"I didn't think it through," Jared confesses, still mortified but deciding to laugh it off because it made Richard laugh, too. Richard gestures with an open palm for Jared to hand him his jacket and Jared obliges, even if being shown hospitality leaves Jared with the knee-jerk reaction of instead wanting to ask Richard what  _he_  needs. 

It's strange to see Richard in such a domestic setting. The hostel had been home, but never a  _home_. Richard's wearing red socks, Jared notes, which he finds gut-wrenchingly adorable. 

"This is, uh... my house," Richard expounds somewhat lamely, flashing Jared a familiar, crooked smile. He runs his hands through his messy hair bashfully, and pulls a face as if he's noticed for the first time how matted up it is.

Jared fights not to ask a thousand questions. He wants to know if Richard's been working on anything. He wants to know if he's eating. He wants to know if he's happy. He wants to know if he has crossed Richard's mind - whether in anger or in fondness it almost doesn't matter, he just wants to know if he's been thought of.

Luckily, there isn't time for that, as Richard invites Jared down into the basement. It's a nicely-lit den, with a couch and a small, outdated television. On the desk opposite, an electronic machine Jared can't identify, seemingly half taken-apart. 

"This is where I used to spend all my time as a kid," Richard explains, flipping on a few more lights and turning up the heat on a small, noisy space heater. 

"I dunno why," Richard explains absentmindedly as he finishes his tasks, "I liked the privacy, I guess. And the quiet."

Richard gestures to an old desktop computer in the corner.

"Took that apart and put it back together more times that I can count. My mom was so mad."

"Mad?"

"They saved up a lot to get me a new computer, and I think she was convinced someday I was going to wire-strip it into an early grave."

Richard, for what it's worth, knows that he's babbling. But he's suddenly struck with the realization that his unwashed hair and tattered old sweatpants raise a myriad of questions he doesn't want to answer. He's impressed Jared hasn't asked any of those questions yet.

Touched, Richard realizes. He's _touched_ that Jared hasn't asked them yet. Has Jared always been like this -- almost telepathically empathetic?

Richard has no idea what to say or how to proceed. He feels overcome with embarrassment and shame and an ugly feeling of irreversible remorse.

Four months. It's been  _four months_. 

"Hey," Jared says, walking closer to the small television against the opposite wall. "I used to have this."

He gestures to the old video game system hooked up above the long-useless VCR.

"Does it still work?" 

"Yeah," Richard beams, the word almost a sigh of relief. 

"Should we?"

\----

They eat up hours playing games. Jared kicks off his shoes and undoes the top button of his well-pressed oxford around hour two. There's something about the way Jared relaxes into the couch like he's always belonged here that alights an unfamiliar hunger in Richard's gut. He can't help but examine him, illuminated in a dull blue by the humming TV screen, a small smile on his otherwise still, serene face. Richard feels suddenly overcome with gratitude. 

"Have people been asking about me?" Richard finally has the courage to ask. Jared puts down his controller and fixes Richard with a thoughtful, lidded expression.

"Yes," he answers. "Often."

"Who?"

"Erlich. Monica. Dinesh and Gilfoyle almost every day for a while, before Erlich sort of exploded at them..."

Richard didn't expect for this to be so hard to hear. 

"You're missed," Jared concludes without a hint of insinuation or guilt. Richard pulls in a deep breath, trying desperately to arrange what feels like an unbearable barrage of thoughts.

"If I went back," Richard begins slowly, watching Jared's eyebrows raise only a hair, "What would I do?" 

Richard doesn't get to hear Jared's answer, as the basement door slams open with a little too much force.

"Oops!" 

A very tall man plods down the stairs heavily, shrugging off a giant, puffy coat. From the red hair and the bony, thin stature, Jared assumes he must be Mr. Hendriks -- or the "Gary" of the green coat fame.

"Richard, is this your friend?" He nearly whoops, delighted. His high, full cheeks are red from the cold, like a painted Christmas ornament. Jared stands to shake his hand, but is immediately scooped into a crushing hug. 

Jared can't even remember the last time someone hugged him. He's too overjoyed to be terrified about crossing inappropriate social boundaries. 

"Gary. Nice to meet you," he says a little too loudly right into Jared's ear.

"Dad..." Richard says warningly, quietly, under his breath.

"What're you two doing hiding out in the basement? Nancy kick you out?" He jokes amicably, heading back towards the stairs and beckoning Jared and Richard to follow in kind. 

"You know Jared, we didn't know if you'd be staying for dinner, so we don't really have anything. Normally we'd just go pick something up but in this snow..."

"That's really no problem," Jared says, "I should be heading out anyway."

Jared can't tell if it's just wishful thinking or if Richard actually, visibly deflates at hearing that. 

"Where are you staying," Mr. Hendriks inquires almost threateningly, "I thought you'd sleep on the pull-out in the den."

"No, no," Jared insists, "I have a room downtown." 

Richard thuds sort of bonelessly onto the couch and looks pointedly away. 

"But I would love to come by tomorrow," Jared continues helpfully.

"Oh! Tomorrow, Richard's sister is driving in from Oklahoma City for dinner. You should join us," Mrs. Hendriks buzzes excitedly, poking her head out from the kitchen. Jared looks to Richard, who is suddenly very focused on the couch cushions.

"You should," Richard echoes, quietly. Then, with an uncomfortable shift of his body, "Unless you think that's weird."

"I don't," Jared answers. Richard won't look at him, but Jared can still catch the small smile that tugs at his lips.

\----

What Jared wants to do is call Richard the moment he wakes up. What Jared wants to do is offer to help Richard's parents shop and cook and set the table for dinner. What Jared wants to do is pretend this is normal and not at all intimidating - just another family affair, meeting the relatives, delighting the in-laws.

Instead, Jared nervously idles the day away, taking a long walk through downtown in Mr. Hendriks' giant, old coat before it begins snowing too hard to see properly. He spends a little too long in front of the mirror straightening his tie and patting down his hair. Vanity always makes Jared feel foolish and a bit guilty, so he tries to remember Erlich clapping him on the shoulder and insisting Jared do anything it takes to "charm the goddamn pants off that little asshole." 

Not quite the language Jared would have chosen, but it makes him smile and feel emboldened all the same.

The drive from Jared's hotel isn't far, but takes a surprisingly long time in the heavy winter storm. He almost misses pulling into the driveway, all the houses camouflaged by the thick snow.

As Jared turns off the ignition, headlights catch his rearview mirror. Jared squints over his shoulder, unable to identify the person pulling in close behind him in the short driveway.

A young woman gets out of the front seat of the car, curly red hair peeking out from under her woolen cap, pulled securely over her ears. Jared feels a bit foolish still sitting in the front seat of his cheap rental car, so he steps out, too. He assumes she must be Richard's older sister, but certainly wouldn't want to venture a guess and seem like he knew a suspicious amount about her.

"Hey," the young woman says, squinting into the snowfall. "Are you - " 

"Jared Dunn," he introduces, closing the awkward distance between them. "It's nice to meet you." 

She shakes his hand firmly, with an unexpected kind of seriousness. She has Richard's thin lips and bright blue eyes, but none of that nervous energy.

"Winnie," she answers in kind.

"I hope your parents let you know I'd be joining - " Jared begins, but suddenly she has both hands gripped around Jared's upper arms, and is looking him dead in the eye with a directness Jared isn't accustomed to. The words die on his tongue.

"Jared," she says, almost sternly. "You're here to help Richie?" 

Jared is so taken aback it doesn't even occur to him to lie, or to try and pretend he's here for any other less foolishly gallant reason than exactly what she'd guessed. So he nods, and doesn't avert his gaze at all, figuring if she can be brave, he can too.

"Good," she says, and she tightens the grip on his arms just a fraction more before releasing him. "Good."

She extracts a key to the front door and Jared follows her inside, watching Richard slowly peel himself off the couch to give his sister a hug. Winnie wraps her arms tight around Richard, and Jared smiles when he notices the wince on Richard's face as he gets accidentally pressed into her hat, still wet and icy with snow. Jared feels a tiny pang of jealousy that someone can just stand there and openly love Richard and hold him in the middle of the room like that, but he shakes those thoughts away as Richard's mother thoughtfully helps Jared remove his coat. She says something about dinner. Jared nods, distantly. He can't bear to look away from Richard, who looks almost happy for once.

\----

The jealousy nags at Jared a few more times during their dinner, but for an entirely different reason now.

It's perhaps the first time that it truly occurs to Jared that he's never had a sibling to love, and Winnie is as good an ideal to covet as any. Richard slips back into a shared language with his older sister, laughing at her jokes, rolling his eyes at her teasing and prodding. She manages to get Richard loose and chatty again without ever prying into his wrecked emotional state, or ratty clothes, or unwashed appearance. Jared, for a brief and lucky moment, feels like he's been dropped back in time when Richard is still a high school kid, full of anticipation and promise, goofy and wry and too smart for his own good. 

And as for Winnie - open faced and incisive, endlessly tucking loose red curls behind her ears, answering questions with unabashed absolutes and refilling Jared's wine glass generously - well, Jared would be too mortified to ever admit to feeling so enamored with  _both_  Hendriks children.

"You can't drive back in this weather," Mrs. Hendriks tuts disapprovingly, heaping another serving of mashed potatoes onto Jared's plate. "You'll both stay here tonight."

Jared flushes and turns down her generous offer with a practiced civility.

"Don't be stupid," Winnie says with a withering glance. "There's a guest bedroom in the basement. It's ridiculous that Richard hasn't offered it to you already."

Richard chokes on his dinner and Jared thinks he can see his mother turn aside to disguise a grin.

After the food, they migrate back to the living room, where Mr. Hendriks cheerfully deposits himself at the upright piano.

"What shall it be, what shall it be," he ponders grandly, digging through books of sheet music in a small basket beside the piano bench.

Jared leans against the door jamb and watches with a warm, hazy affection as Mrs. Hendriks pitches song after song that she's "just dying" to hear.

"It's a stupid tradition," Richard says quietly, sidling up alongside Jared with his hands shoved in the back pockets of his jeans. He peers up at Jared almost bashfully - whether from the proximity or the embarrassing family tradition Jared cannot discern. 

"After dinner, Dad plays standards. Mom sings. Winnie and I watch." 

"You don't sing along?" Jared teases, and Richard barks a surprised laugh.

"Not ever," Richard insists. He gestures an emphatic little slash with his hand. " _Ever._ "

Mr. Hendriks clears his throat and begins a rousing, bouncy chorus of "I'm Not At All in Love." Winnie curls up on the couch nearby and taps her fingers in time on the rim of her wine glass.

"They love musicals," Richard comments, as they appreciate the sweet, unironic corniness of it all. "Winnie is actually, uh,  _Winifred_. There's some character in a musical or something named Winifred."

Jared nods, grinning. 

"Yes, there is."

"You know it?" Richard  

"Yes," Jared assures, can almost feel his cheeks hurting from how widely he's smiling. "Yes, I do."

"Loser," Richard teases under his breath. He bumps his shoulder into Jared's arm and doesn't move away. 

Mr. Hendriks segues nicely into "Embraceable You", and Jared thinks of old records and old families, and can't help but sing along as quietly as he can manage. Richard glances up at Jared like he had something clever to say but thought better of it.  

Mrs. Hendriks overhears him, claps her hands with delight, and beckons Jared closer to the piano. 

"Leave him alone, Ma," Winnie drawls from the couch. But Richard has already given Jared a supportive little shove forward, and suddenly Jared is mortified to find himself four songs deep into the Gershwin songbook.

\----

Jared is meant to leave tomorrow morning.

Richard is mired in a new kind of guilt and anxiety, and wastes half the day feeling shackled to his bed. Jared will leave tomorrow, and then what? How many times can Jared come back for him before Jared realizes he can't waste his life away salvaging someone else's already wasted life?

When he finally can drag himself out of bed and downstairs, Jared is helping his mother with the dishes. She laughs at something Jared says, and motions for him to toss her a towel.

Richard can't quite pin down how he feels -- simultaneously like Jared has always been a part of his life and this is just one more page in their inevitable novel, but too like Jared is a fleeting moment in time, dangerously close to being spooked and tearing off into the darkness for good.

Jared has a ticket back to Palo Alto for tomorrow morning.

He coughs, and Jared looks up from the sink and waves genially in Richard's direction. 

"Good morning," he chirps, like it isn't already 12:30. 

"Hey," Richard replies. His mother pushes gently past Richard in the doorway, taking a moment to scrub her hands affectionately through his messy bedhead as she passes.

"How are you feeling?" Jared asks, and Richard doesn't feel like answering that question, so instead he says,

"The snow's stopped. Wanna take a drive?"

Jared looks back at him thoughtfully, doing a terrible job of masking the joy on his face.

"I would," Jared replies, and puts down his towel.

"Gimme a minute to change," Richard instructs, and it feels like someone has turned on all the lights in his head thrown open a window, and cold, crisp air is flooding through him and clearing him out.

Jared is going to be on a plane tomorrow morning. 

\---- 

"Oh," Richard yelps, pointing out Jared's passenger window. "That tree. Was Excalibur."

"Excalibur?" Jared laughs, wiping away from frost from the window and peering at it more closely as Richard slows the car.

"If you could climb that tree, you were king," Richard expounds, doubly amused at how stupid his story is and how much he knows Jared doesn't care. "I know the analogy doesn't quite line up but - "

"Kids," Jared supplies helpfully.

"So many kids broke their legs," Richard continues. "Including Bighead."

"Really?"

"Three times!" Richard says, delighting in the ridiculousness of it. And suddenly he's laughing so hard he's pounding on the steering wheel and needs to stop the car entirely. He laughs until his whole body convulses, and he's not quite sure what long-repressed emotion he's exorcising from his body, but he feels better than he can ever remember feeling.

\----

That evening after dinner ("one last family supper," Mr. Hendriks had cooed a bit despairingly, going on to mention all the songs they hadn't sung through yet), Richard finds Jared standing in the hallway outside his room, peering carefully at a picture on the wall.

"What's up?" Richard asks, hoping he seems nonchalant. He settles next to Jared and also looks at the hung photo.

Richard is young -- a highschool freshman maybe -- standing between his parents and Winnie who is in her purple and white high school graduation robes. They are all beaming. Richard had never noticed he really has his father's smile. 

"Did you know, then?" Jared asks in a low voice.

"What?"

"That you were a genius?"

Richard huffs an uncomfortable, startled laugh.

"Jesus, Jared," Richard exhales. "I'm not. I never was."

Jared summons up some of that directness he so admired in Winnie and fixes Richard's gaze unfalteringly. Richard's blue eyes are prominent, even in the dim light.

"You are," Jared insists. "I saw it the moment I met you." 

"Stop," Richard entreats. But Jared cannot.

"People can see it," he continues. "When you walk in a room." 

"Please, stop."

"Maybe you're frightened to admit it," Jared persists, face growing hot. "That you're a genius. Maybe you feel it is something you should tamp down and pretend is -- isn't important."

" _Jared_."

"But I've known since day one. It's why I followed you then, and why I followed you now." 

Jared nods once, deliberately, like the punctuation on a run-on sentence. 

"I apologize if I've overstepped any boundaries, but it needed to be said," Jared concludes.

There's that cold gust of wind again, Richard thinks, clearing out the cobwebs and slamming open doors.

He grabs Jared's hand. 

"Don't go back tomorrow," Richard says, and he doesn't mean to plead, but he's pleading, frightened.

"I have to. There are people waiting for me." 

A tiny sound escapes Richard - a gasp, maybe, or a sob. The next thing he knows, he's clutching at Jared's collar and kissing him like his life depends on it. It feels a bit like it does.

\---- 

"We'll be quiet," Richard chatters, more for himself than for Jared, who seems almost serene in comparison.

"Yes," Jared assures, sinking slowly to his knees.

"I'm glad we're doing this," he continues, stammeringly. 

"Yes." And Jared helps him step out of his pants. 

"We'll just be careful. Careful and quiet."

Jared laughs a little against the inside of Richard's thigh.

"Yes," Jared says again. His touch is electric, his mouth hot and shocking. Richard throws his head back and gasps.

\----

Mr. Hendriks leaves early for work the next day, so he slips a goodbye note to Jared under Richard's door. He's a bit mortified to realize Richard's parents must have deduced where Jared spent his last night. 

The note is short and thoughtful, and Jared can hardly think of a time he's felt more appreciated. He would be happier if Richard weren't seemingly catatonic in bed, staring unblinkingly up at the ceiling. 

"Richard," Jared entreats gently. "Please get up."

"You can't go," Richard intones for another countless time. A tear slips out of his eye and rolls almost cinematically down the slope of his cheek, pooling in his ear.

Jared sits beside him on the bed and takes Richard's hand between his own. He runs his thumb across the smooth expanse of his palm, feeling as the trembling lessens. 

"I'm needed back home," Jared says gently, but Richard slams his free hand against the mattress beside him and keens,

" _I_ need you."

He knows it sounds childish and stupid and so, so selfish. But he can't help himself.

"Come with me," Jared says. "Come home with me."

Richard screws his eyes shut and wails.

It's like he's watching himself from the outside, Richard thinks. He's somehow aware that he's miserable, but also on the brink of being happier than he's ever been in his life. All it takes is a decision. A resolution to do _something._ Jared runs gentle fingers through Richard's hair and shushes him rhythmically, hypnotically.  

"Richard," he whispers, pressing a chaste, tender kiss to Richard's temple. "If you need me here... I'll stay. I'll never leave you."

Richard exhales a shaky breath and looks up at Jared, who is gazing back down at him like Richard is the most precious thing he's ever had the fortune to breathe the same air as. 

"But I think," Jared continues kindly, tears welling up in his own eyes as he brushes hair away from Richard's forehead, "you should come home with me."

\----

"I'm proud of you, sweetheart," Mrs. Hendriks says, laying a gloved hand against Richard's cheek. "I really am." 

Richard mutters something unintelligible and ducks his head. She pulls her son into a hug and feels him shaking in her arms, maybe from nerves, maybe from the cold. 

"Mom," he says quietly into her ear, "I'm scared. I'm scared it'll happen again." 

She kisses his cheek and feels wetness there. He sniffs and buries his face in the crook of her neck again, and it's hard for her not to remember Richard as a child - so sensitive and brilliant and impatient and frightened.

"You can always come home," she consoles, resolving not to cry there in the airport driveway along with her son.

Jared gently touches Richard's shoulder.

"Whenever you're ready, Richard," he says in that sweet, reedy voice, and it feels a little easier to pull away from his mother.

"Anything you forgot, we can send you," Mrs. Hendriks chats nervously - a habit Jared sees in Richard, too. "Don't hesitate to ask for anything. Both of you." 

Jared bends down and picks up both of their carry-on bags - Richard's heavy and haphazardly packed at the last minute as he teetered in and out of resolving to come home with Jared - and points Richard towards their gate.

Mrs. Hendriks grabs Jared by the arm at the last moment. He spins around and meets her gaze expectantly, but she is suddenly silent, biting at her lower lip the way that Richard does when he's inundated with thoughts. So Jared does the kind thing, and fills in the blank for her.

"I will," he assures her in a low, sincere voice.

\----

Richard startles awake as the plane touches down. Jared, too, seems to be blinking sleep away, slowly flexing his long legs that'd been jammed uncomfortably in the space in front of him.

"Guess we made it," Jared says in a voice crackly from dryness and disuse. Paired with the almost childish statement of facts, it's impossibly endearing. He leans over and folds down Richard's collar, which must have flipped up in his sleep. Before Jared can retract his hand, Richard seizes it and presses a small kiss to the tops of his knuckles.

Jared's eyes light up with an almost indescribable joy. Richard is suddenly overcome with the desire to see that look on his face over and over again, as many times as humanely possible. They don't even have to leave these seats. He'll live here and kiss Jared's hands and watch him smile and flush red and they'll subsist entirely on small bags of peanuts and cups of crushed ice.

Richard, maybe, is a little scared to disembark. He looks pointedly out the window and tamps down a sudden wave of nausea.

"I'm a little, um," Richard babbles nervously. "I guess I feel a little -- uh,"

"Everyone is going to be very relieved to see you," Jared assures him kindly.

"Erlich is going to be mad at me," Richard says, biting at his thumbnail.

"Oh. Furious."

Richard snaps his head around to Jared, but Jared is smiling.

"But I think it'll pass."

\----

Moving back is as difficult as Richard feared it would be.

But he doesn't do it alone, and that's enough.

 

 


End file.
